xvi Introduction earlier during the Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) and had remained there practically unchanged ever since despite these new emerging technologies. Compelled by radically different political and economic circumstances, both sides of the confl ict were also determined to win the fi ght, practi- cally at all costs. The Southern (or Confederate) forces were fi ghting for what they thought was their very economic and cultural existence, their allegiance to statehood over nationhood, whereas the Northern (or Union) Army was fi ghting at fi rst to preserve the Union, which was an ideal, but the cause eventually would change to freeing the slaves. As the war pro- gressed Abraham Lincoln transformed the Union cause into a fi ght to cre- ate universal equality. The political leadership in the South fundamentally believed that they had the constitutional right to secede from the Union. Lincoln, as both president of the United States and commander in chief, fundamentally disagreed, and was predisposed to use all his power to keep the Union intact by force. In the end, Lincoln’s view prevailed. Jefferson Davis’s view did not prevail. The South could never have prevailed, pri- marily because history had passed them by. The economic tide had turned against them. Today, more than 150 years after the war, America needs to have a renewed urgency in understanding the human experience of the American Civil War. Sociologically speaking, we are about to lose the last genera- tion who knew veterans of the war. In my own family, my father and my mother’s sister are now the only surviving members of that last generation who interacted with Civil War veterans in their lifetime. My aunt knew her grandfather longer and better than I ever knew her father, who was my grandfather. What she fi rst knew about that war she directly learned from my great grandfather, a Civil War veteran. After the end of that last gener- ation, we will only know about the war from the history books. All we will have to go by, then, are the artifacts, documents, histories, memoirs, and the literature of the war. We will not have any human connection remain- ing. Thus, the 150th anniversary has offered us a real opportunity to dis- cover both the places and experiences that shaped the outcome of the war, a confl ict that so greatly shaped who we are today as a people and a nation. The following chapters cover literature that is central to understanding the American Civil War. Each one of these chapters is a literary testament to the unprecedented diffi culties of the war not only to American democ- racy but also to the individuals who were living during its most troubling test to that democracy. Chapter 1 examines the war novel, The Red Badge of Courage , by Stephen Crane. This novel focuses on the moral test of one young soldier, Henry Fleming, who fi nds himself on the battlefi eld for the fi rst time. The major crisis in this novel is whether the young Union
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